


Together, We Grow

by brokenmemento



Category: Grace and Frankie (TV)
Genre: Coming Out, Developing Relationship, F/F, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-25
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-05-28 05:21:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15041636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenmemento/pseuds/brokenmemento
Summary: A story of being lost and finding a way through.





	Together, We Grow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lilbexi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilbexi/gifts).



> From the prompt: "Coming Out to the family, rated 'E'."
> 
> I'd call this a hard "M" though with a little heart. (Clear references to sexual acts but not an outright explaining of them.)

**I.**

She comes to me in the moonlight and I feel her form press against the expanse of mine, her head resting on my shoulder in an effort to seek comfort. Frankie knew I wasn’t asleep, didn’t take the closed door and silence as a deterrent, instead choosing to enter and envelope.

Her body is a contrast in sensation, one I’ve learned to treasure. I feel the curvature of her hips completely, the tenderness of her hands acutely. Heat permeates off of her, the airing out of an encompassing mood she ascribes to. Warmth so much a part of many of her waking moments.

Tonight, I don’t dare theorize as to why she’s sought my bed, why she’s sought me in this makeshift place. It’s easier to let her come to me on her own volition, to speak her truths on her own terms. 

The wait is not unbearable, like many other things that categorize our days here. Letting the seconds go is easier than trying to stick myself into a life I don’t belong in when the sun burns high overhead. This is a comfort amid a lurching existence, one that seems without end. 

“They won’t let me do my artwork,” she mutters sadly against my arm, head having drifted slightly downward. 

“They won’t let me run Vybrant,” I admit back, my own voice sounding tired against the night. 

“Oh, Grace. What are we going to do?”

With this, I exert the effort to turn over and face her distressed eyes. The pure emotion she wears in them breaks my heart. I lack the capacity to redo the world in her favor, to give her artist’s hands a canvas and brushes to paint. Permission is a hard-pressed item to obtain and I halfway think to tell her to ask for forgiveness instead. Apologies can come after a sneaky act is found out.

My capabilities run shallow for the situation we’re in so I do the only thing I am able to in order to stop the metaphorical bleeding: my lips seek hers and I press them together in the act of desperation. 

Rejection has always been easier for me to deal with than sadness. I’m equipped with alcohol and sarcasm for the first, but the second one usually upends me completely. Adding the kiss to my toolbox is a new tactic that arises from the presence of Frankie only. 

It has not been offered in the past and likely will never be extended to anyone other than her for the remainder of my time. I could think about what that means but simplicity beckons and I wallow in it. Tonight, my mouth on hers and hers on mine is enough kinetically, the small moan she loses during it enough audibly, the black nothingness of my closed eyes enough visually. 

I have other things I could add to these sensory experiences: touches to places, words to bring forth, spaces to gaze upon. 

Tonight, my comfort to her has to be only this. Tomorrow the ramifications will come or not, leading me to rearrange the parts again. I do not worry. I’ve become good at it over the last five years. 

**II.**

It happens one evening and there is no ignoring it now. 

The kiss sat firm in me like a remnant longing to be out in the open again, but Frankie left it at the boundary of my mattress the next morning and propelled herself into the life we were given. A bastard act not claimed or cherished it seemed, my sole contribution to healing ignored.

She corners me against the wall while I’m perilously close to the glaring blue of the plastic button. I’ve just been to another popup without her, so my patience with fuckery is slim. She may not care about Vybrant anymore or kissing me, but I’m floundering to stay afloat with something that takes my mind off of being in a home. 

“I missed you today,” she says quietly and smiles, runs her nose along the flesh of my neck. 

The noise I let loose is involuntary and I’m a bit embarrassed. I have to do something to counteract the barrage so I deflect like one of us always inevitably does. “You wouldn’t have had to if you’d actually help me sell the vibrator we designed, marketed, and sell.”

“Yet there are so many other things I could do with you and that vibrator,” she says and I about melt down the wall. 

“Okay, wait a second. As intriguing as that line of thought is, let’s back up a second. I recall about two weeks ago, kissing you in my bed and then you getting up the next morning and never mentioning it again. Before we catapult forward, shouldn’t we backtrack a little bit?”

She lets a growl rumble in her sternum and then backs away from me, entering the living room and leaving me free of her bodily trap. Not exactly what I was going for. I follow apprehensively. She plops on the couch and I eye her. 

“I think, in the moment, I liked it. Enjoyed it even. But when I woke up, I all but convinced myself it was a dream that felt real and I was too chicken shit to ask for it again,” she admits. 

I sit down beside her and grab her hand. “Frankie, it’s okay. I should have said something before now, but I didn’t know how to bring it up either. I was worried you wanted to avoid it.”

“No!” It almost is a shout. “I want to do it again so badly, I can taste it.”

And with that, I feel the physical stirrings betray my mind. Having a brain and a body work in tandem would be ideal, but mine would rather fight to the death for dominance. Reason loses to the prospect of passion, to not entirely unearthed things that I have kept close. They’re peeking through though and Frankie is catching glimpses. 

She surges forward and I am no longer the lone plunger into unsure and choppy waters. I do not drift blindly and let it wash over me. I lap too. I paddle and rise as her mouth fuses to mine. 

Kissing my best friend is what begins it. What comes next is a combination of things. 

\---

We’re in my bedroom again but the reasons are starkly different this time. Behind us is a trail of discard, clothing lying like markers trying to lure us back to sanity. I let her unwrap me like a secret on Christmas morning, a Hanukkah gift near the glorious light of a Menorah. 

She revels in the new parts of my body that become hers to explore. My breasts become clay in her skilled hands, fingertips peaking my nipples into attention. Yes, I let her learn me like this, lines being sketched with sweat instead of charcoal or paint. 

I encourage her to rid the last barrier I hold, to expose me in my truest form for her eyes to see. My well poised and nagging modesty beats handily in my brain, but what beats lower speaks louder. I will not succumb to those thoughts today. 

My knees are gone, she knows, and so she adapts to my strengths and hers. She grabs a pillow from the head of my bed, wildly stuffs it behind my back. My legs hang off of the side of the bed and when she stands over me in an olive-skinned contrast, I thank whomever that I’m alive. 

Frankie ambles forward, pushing me gently down so that I am under her and her legs straddle my left thigh. I feel her try to peg her knee as securely as she can near my right one. It opens me a little and I try not to whimper in anticipation. 

When she sinks down and shares herself with me, when her fingers seek purchase and go inside of my body, I see all of the stars in the sky. 

**III.**

“Let’s tell people,” she says with an air of indifference one morning over breakfast. 

My spoon pauses over the granola in my bowl and I don’t turn to look at her, instead frozen and not knowing what to say. I glance at my robe, gaping a little despite the belt, and see the glaring reminder that I’m bare beneath. That there really is something to tell. 

“Uh…” I begin, incoherent ideas and lackluster onomatopoeia swirling for what comes next out of my mouth. 

“Are you ashamed?”

“What? No. That’s absurd.”

“Then why the balk? It’s like ripping off a band-aid. We just gotta do it,” she tries to encourage. 

Only it isn’t that easy, the weightiness of it a burden to carry. It’s soul consuming and aches to hold on to. Now? I understand Robert. I understand Sol. I am regretful where they are concerned, but thankful too. They both ransacked our lives and flung Frankie and I together. That makes it worth everything. That makes it harder to share with the world.

“This is still new, still fresh. Don’t we want to navigate our way through it ourselves before we start letting everyone know?” I fiddle with the rolled up collar of my robe, a nervous tick in a heavy conversation. I hope Frankie won’t notice, but then of course she fucking does. 

She grabs hold of my hand mid fidget and sits lightly in my lap, still maintaining the brunt of her weight herself. Frankie kisses me in her eraser way, tries to wipe me clean. “I want to be able to touch you in public without fear, to hold your hand when we walk through the halls here or show up at family gatherings again someday.”

We both don’t comment about how our offspring are on radio silence at the moment and while surface assimilation has occurred, neither of us are too keen to stay here indefinitely. She knows I’m in the process of getting the house back but has no idea what it’s cost me, my pride among other things. 

Running a hand through my hair, she continues. “I’m proud of you, Grace. I want the world to know you’re mine.”

“Give me time to acclimate to the idea,” I try, not outright dismissing it but not accepting it wholly either. 

“At the end of the day, that’s all I can ask for I suppose.” She rises from her perch on top of me and puts her dishes in the sink. When she stalks behind me, I hear rather than see her robe drop to the ground. The whoosh of air from its decent hits my ankles propped on the stool. 

I turn to see her nakedness disappearing into her bedroom. My breakfast sits forgotten on the counter as I follow obediently behind. 

**IV.**

It’s embarrassing in how I finally agree to appease Frankie with her request. 

I’ve got another pillow, under me this time and tucked beneath my backside with my legs draped over Frankie’s shoulders. Her tongue works in between. 

“I’ll do it!” I cry, as she swipes me into orgasmic bliss. I lock onto her fingers from below and ride out the spasms. 

When I come back to myself, she’s hovering over me with a smile on her face and sweat trickling down her brow. “You’re serious?”

“I said it, didn’t I?”

She moves her head from side to side, makes a face, and shrugs. “It was mid-climax, so that’s why I’m asking again. I know how you tend to be rather forthcoming when you’re...coming.” She smiles again at her pun.

I roll my eyes and flip her as best I can for someone my age. If anyone asked, were I sharing this kind of thing already, I’d totally say I did it on my own. Truth be told, I nudge Frankie in a direction and she follows my lead wonderfully, resting her body under mine. 

Now it’s my turn to gaze and touch. She’s got to be wound up from what she just did me, so now it’s my time to pay it forward. I take the pads of three fingers on my right hand and begin to swipe and swirl between the slopes of our bodies on her. 

“I’ll do it,” I say again, looking her straight in the eye. She’s slick on my fingertips and I groan, my eyes going shut in spite of my will to not hurdle myself back into arousal.

“Say it. Say you’re mine. I want to hear you,” Frankie pants, clearly caught up in our actions and words. 

“I belong to you. Now, forever, always,” I say to her, depositing every ounce of my emotion into the formation of the declaration. 

While not quite a kink, it’s working exactly like one should. The romanticism of it is reverberating in multiple parts of my body, not all of them out for the count.

“Grace…”

“Please, Frankie. Come for me,” I urge, intent on getting my own command filled if I’m agreeing to hers. She grips me in resolution, and I taste the promises I’ve made to her on her tongue.

\---

“How do you want to do it?” she asks against my skin, the cool air of her breath sending goosebumps percolating across my body. 

“I don’t know. This was your idea,” I shoot back, feeling her fingers glide down, down, down.

“Mmm, we could always buy them a card on Etsy that says something like “Congrats on your sets of homosexual parents.” They make a card for everything these days,” Frankie suggests lightly.

“I don’t know. Wouldn’t it just be easier to bake them a cake? And in the cake, there are a series of clues…”

Her fingers connect where I am still tender from earlier and I can’t hold back the noise of myself winding up again. She comes to wrap her front solidly to my back, vestiges of our lovemaking still everywhere: the crumpled sheets forgotten on the floor, the scent of our bodies mixing the substances of exertion and sexual stimulation, the heap of clothes deserted to the recesses of the carpet.

“What would we put inside the cake, our mini vibe? And besides, I’m never playing another one of those games with Bud again. He’s too  _ in _ to it, you know?”

I laugh and try to ease her off of me so that I can turn and slide back under.

“All that work for a gender neutral cake,” I laugh. At the time it hadn’t been funny or even amusing, but I’ve learned that taking a swipe at our kids helps the both of us to heal a little where they’re concerned. I look up into her eyes and smile, enjoying the sensation of our bodies being melded together again.

“We could just get married and send them post-wedding announcements,” Frankie shrugs and I know the smile on my face fades as quick as it got there, my heart hammering inside my chest. Amped up from her words, fear piercing. The topic is heavier than coming out, of which I am barely handling as it is. “I’m kidding. Slow your non-existent roll.” She rolls her eyes as if I was insane to ever entertain the thought.

I exhale and shake my head. “We’re barreling toward seventy-six. Isn’t getting married kind of moot by this point?” I’d rather not think about how much time I actually get with Frankie, what we are allowed to have with one another. It’s hard to stop myself from wallowing in self-pity sometimes, how I managed to waste forty-four years around her and never knew how to ask for what we have now. All of that time, gone.

“You’re overthinking. I can feel it,” Frankie says as she rests her head against my shoulder. She works to tangle her left foot between my legs, so I latch on and hold tightly. 

“Yeah,” I say quietly. 

What a shame it would be to burn out before we have time to dance in flame. I grip her against my body, willing tomorrow to take longer in its arrival.

**V.**

“You need to calm down,” she tries to soothe with a hand to my back. Not even the breeze billowing in from the back porch can rid me of the perspiration I feel gathering at my temple, threatening at the juncture of my breasts. 

The kids arrived ceremoniously on time and even though I’ve had time, like month with an ‘s,’ I still feel like I might not make it through the evening alive given the reason we’ve invited them for. 

I look down at the spread of prepared dishes, none of them what Frankie concocted, none of them what I will eat. She has held annoyingly steady in her exasperating qualities and I suppose I will to mine tonight as well. I don’t think I could get any of it down even if I wanted to, so I’ve tried to overcompensate and overwhelm them to the degree I’m feeling. Only with food. 

“It’s hard to calm down when I’m about to spring the news on them that their dads have already beat us to first,” I say through gritted teeth. I know full well I agreed to this, but I’m thinking that saying yes while I orgasm is probably something I need to hold back on in the future. 

“They’re already indoctrinated into the gay lifestyle with Robert and Sol. Adding a Grace and Frankie to the mix might not be such a huge deal after all.” She stops and shoves a cube of cheese into her mouth, then, of course, speaks while chewing. “By the end of the night, we could be thanking those two bozos for leaving us.”

I tilt my head and purse my lips at her. Her eyes go wide and she nods, picking up what I wanted to say seemingly telepathically. “Okay, maybe you’re right. Knowing our kids, it could be like when we sprang our business venture on them. You don’t happen to have a brown paper bag for Coyote, a box of jewelry for Brianna, a kid to kick Mallory in the ribs, and a platter to hold Bud’s eyeballs when they pop out, do you?”

I laugh at both the hilarity of what this has lead us to and a nervous, jauntiness that I can’t quite shake. “Come here,” Frankie says and starts pulling me down the hallway, barely out of sight from our families. Surely not now…

“I need you to pause, stop and take stock of this life we have made together.” 

I want to tell her I have, that I think about it endlessly, but I only nod. I’ve learned to let Frankie speak to me as she will, the intended effect usually always reached. 

“No matter what happens out there, it’s you and me. You got that? So they may disown us but they may embrace us too. Whatever happens, it can’t be any worse than them sticking us in a home. I mean, been there, done that. Right?”

A tear falls from my eye, one I didn’t know had even crept out. She laughs and wipes it away, letting her touch linger on my cheek a while. I lean into it, my favorite sensation by far. 

“I love you, Grace Hanson. Keep repeating that to yourself when we are walking through fire and brimstone out there.”

“Or flowers and rainbows?” I offer jokingly. 

“Oh honey, I’m so proud of you. Your comedic timing has really gotten to be something. Rainbows. Classic allusion.”

She grabs my hand and leads me back to the kitchen, helps me carry the sustenance to our blood. I only hope it’s mine and hers not dripping on the ground in a little while. 

\---

“Not that I don’t love an excuse to not heat up Top Ramen or cruise for takeout, but what’s the occasion?” Brianna asks, gaze intently fixed upon me. 

I should have pegged her for the one to bring it up. She always was more observant than the rest of our crew. Right now, I can’t help but bemoan internally about that wiliness of hers. “Can’t we just invite our children over for a meal because we miss them?” I say brightly. Maybe a little too beaming. 

Frankie sits across from me beside Coyote and makes a jerking motion with her thumb across her neck. It doesn’t mean ‘Shut the fuck up’ overall, just ‘Tone it the fuck down’ right now. I give a tight nod in her direction and she continues on with her languid chew. 

I realize after what I’ve done: referred to the kids not by their separate parental units but given them the all-encompassing personal pronoun of ‘ours.’ The speaking and noticing of it makes a glow in my chest. At this, I arrive at the greatest amount of courage I will ever have. 

“Not usually,” Coyote kindly supplies. He throws me an apologetic smile and glances over at Bud who is shaking his head. Another thing to be thankful for: Allison taking Faith to visit her parents. I love that little bundle like my own but contending with her intermittent cries tonight would have been too much to compete with.

Brianna said Barry was working late, using air quotes and muttering something about him ‘not tapping a piece of side ass instead.’ Mallory hired a sitter for her brood, so I figure I should do them all a favor and get to the punch as quickly as possible. 

“Okay, there is a reason your mom and I invited you all here tonight,” I begin, trying to choose my words carefully. 

“Oh God, you’ve written us out of the will. I knew putting you guys in that home was a bad idea. I just went along with it because odd numbers creep me out, seriously,” Brianna dithers on. As if letting her siblings accost us by themselves without her was the issue… 

Frankie smirks but otherwise stays straddled between her default mode, no fucking help at all, and this strange new stage where she says absolutely nothing. I begin to wonder if she’s not punishing me for not agreeing to this from the get-go. That seems a little heavy handed, even for her, so I shove it aside. 

“They haven’t changed their wills,” Bud cuts in with a shake of his head. “They remain the same as the day I drew them up for them.” Three other sets of eyes turn to look at him in astonishment, no doubt, over him knowing the contents of our final wishes and not them. I want to remind them that he is a lawyer after all, even if his specialty just happens to be divorce. I skip over the obvious. 

“Will you all stop speculating and let me get to it? Goodness…” I look out across the table at five sets of eyes, all riding the coattails of what I will say next. 

“Frankie and I are together,” I slowly admit. 

“In the gay way,” Frankie chimes in. 

All hell breaks loose. 

I hear a “What the fuuuuuuuuck” drawn out longer than I can hold a breath and a “No, no, no-ho” repeated over and over from my bunch while Bud leans back in his chair with his eyes wide and hands on his head. Regretting not getting that paper bag, I watch Coyote pace back and forth while he melts down like a nuclear reactor, saying things like “Oh man, not again. We’ve already been through this once.”

I sit and grab at my martini glass, another blessing in a place engulfed in flames. I’m outside of my body looking in, the mess getting uglier by the second. Blearily, I process Frankie rounding the table to come and stand by my side. Her words from earlier reverberate back to me. _ I love you _ , she had said. If only those words could put out the blaze. 

“Alright, everybody sit down and shut up,” Frankie says loudly over the din.

I look up and she sends a wink my way. I rearrange my focus to the kids in front of me. Their grown faces stare back but it’s their visages as babies and toddlers and teenagers I see, growing and changing through the years to become these beautifully flawed beings. 

“What Grace said is true. We are together. You know sexually…”

“I keep threatening to black out and I so wish it would happen right now,” Brianna says in disbelief. 

“And so what if I like it when she sits on my face or she touches my clitoris with her hands…”

“Please stop,” Mallory begs and I stand up to reign in this sordid description that doesn’t seem to be flickering out. 

“Frankie, that’s enough,” I scold, knowing I’m ten shades of red because what she has said isn’t far off the mark. In fact, it’s so on the mark, it’s staggering for me to hear, much less our children, and I’m in the middle of it. 

“That’s payback for stuffing me and your mom in that shit hole then selling our house. And maybe I should be thanking all of you ungrateful heathens for doing it because otherwise, my life might look the exact same as it did and I’d be watching this on the outskirts and she’d be with a different person standing here right now.” She stops and makes a pained face. “God, Grace. I don’t even want to think about it. That’s how bad it hurts.”

I shake my head and wrap my arms around her, holding her in front of God and our children and anyone who wants to look. Disconnecting from it after a few moments, I kiss her firmly but chastely on the lips and wipe a strand of hair out of her face. 

“This is my life now,” I tell her. Because it is. Everything has gone quiet around the microcosm her and I have created. With her face in my hands, I turn toward the table. 

They all stand immobile and in different forms of the stages of emotion: denial, bargaining, panic, introspection. 

When Brianna makes a face but starts to nod and says “Okay,” I feel hope warm inside my chest. It may not quite be acceptance, but it seems like a start. 

\---

Fanfare seems trivial at seventy-seven but that doesn’t dissuade Frankie from trying. It’s one of the things I have come to love most about her. 

She begins my morning with fresh flowers on the nightstand and a meeting of our lips. Breakfast is shared in bed and the day spent never far out of one another’s reach. Wind twirls in the strands of our hair as we watch gulls dive into the water from our perch on the patio, pressed together lazily. 

Night curls itself around the day and I let Frankie feed me tiny samplings of a single slice of cake adorned with a candle, a piece feeding a whole. When I lean into her, I can taste the displaced crumbs and icing leftover. 

My sweet dessert rids me of my barriers, unpeels the cloak of demurity. I lay bare and full. Amid a sigh, pressed to allow no space, I give to Frankie the finality of what I have left. 

“Marry me,” I tell her as a whisper against her skin. A tear falls, then two. My heart swells beyond belief. I tuck myself into the only life worth living, the ‘Yes’ of her answer the most precious thing on my ears. 


End file.
